Awake, arise or be for ever fall'n
by vikung-fu
Summary: Spoilers for episode 49. On his throne of golden light, the once and future king muses on the inevitability of all that has been and all that will one day be.


**Awake, arise or be for ever fall'****n**

It had happened countless times before, the flow of those moments ebbing towards his coronation and then receding. How many incarnations of his younger self had he met now, how many of them had he disposed of, had he wrung the necks of, casting them back down the mountain to start again?

It was easier when they opposed him. He preferred those ones to the ones who broke under the pressure, the ones who resorted to weeping in the comfort of their rooms as the world went up in flames around them. Then, of course, there were those with the power to reimagine what had once been, what would yet be. Those were the most dangerous, he most admired and feared those ones.

Several times before now, he had encountered different incarnations of himself, different occasions on which the extent of his tremendous untapped potential had reshaped the world before him, had reshaped who he had once been. Once, he had seen Zi-o as a young woman before him, long blonde hair, furious gaze as she held the ziku-driver at her waist. On another occasion, he had seen a version of himself who had been consumed by the possibility of his having been the chusen Agito and failed, the flesh rotting as he had assumed that monstrous form. There were countless possibilities, countless versions of himself waiting to happen, waiting to scale the mountain, to claw their way up to where his throne resided in nothingness only to find themselves wanting, to be thrown back into the abyss.

Better that they never tried, he had thought to begin with; better that they remained but princes in those Hells of their own making than dare challenge him.

Yet, it would keep happening, he knew that instinctively. As long as he existed, as long as there was the _possibility_ of him existing, then the cycle would continue endlessly until finally, everything came to pass, or the boy he might once have been learnt that he did not _need_ to be king in order to make the difference that fate required of him. It was enough to be Tokiwa Sougo, he didn't need to be anything else.

And yet the last one he had fought against had disturbed him; that awesome power he wielded, this _Grand Zi-o_ armour. At the end of the world, in the nothingness of possibility, the future that King had had much time to reflect on that. For a moment during his final confrontation, before the boy had willingly written himself out of existence, he had thought for a single heartbeat that he was to be defeated. That, however, he attributed to the interference of the Timejacker, Schwartz.

"_Schwartz_," he said the name aloud, listening to the sound of the word in the hollow emptiness at the end of time.

There had been a man of singular determination. A cruel smile spread across his lips. A shame that such a man would not be seen again. Yet, what if—

He silenced the thought swiftly, refusing to allow it to form. This new world that had been shaped from the sacrifice of his previous self, this world in which he had gathered up all those whom he cared for and shaped a dream of domesticity around them—this world, if it could contain such erstwhile anachronisms as Schwartz's aides, then surely could it also contain some seed or suggestion of Schwartz himself, that man's presence, like his own, waiting for the right occasion to exist.

No, he thought sourly, that was impossible. Schwartz had been anomaly, an aberration in the natural flow of things; the scenarios that Schwartz had engineered, the death of his parents, the drawing together of other worlds, the manipulation of Kakogawa Hiryu, that was a history different from the one he knew, different from the past he had lived through.

Yet the power of Zi-o was enough to reimagine his comrades, to give life to those two children of the resistance who had opposed him, and if such was a possibility then perhaps there was more that could be done; perhaps, even at the end of time, there was something _he _could do to ensure the world he knew came into place.

He closed his eyes, dwelling on the moment. Would he remember this as history began to change? Would he still recall these thoughts as the younger boy came into his own and made his way towards an inevitable confrontation with him? And what would the boy be liked, the child of this reshaped timeline, a child who had enjoyed the carefree days of his youth before being forced to shoulder the burden of his royal destiny?

Would he ever see the power, the majesty of Grand Zi-o again? Or would this new one, safe and warm in the embrace of adolescence, be the version of him that would finally break the cycle, that would finally understand that, in the perfect world, there was no need for kings of any sort; no gods, and certainly no masters.

Quietly, on his throne of golden light, Tokiwa Sougo waited once more for the past to catch up with him.


End file.
